


three hundred sixty-five pomegranate seeds

by TheElusiveBadger



Category: Kings (TV 2009)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Starvation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-04
Updated: 2016-03-04
Packaged: 2018-05-24 15:47:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6158631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheElusiveBadger/pseuds/TheElusiveBadger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack Benjamin's imprisonment in six parts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	three hundred sixty-five pomegranate seeds

It is day twenty-one, and Jack Benjamin is hungrier than he has ever been.

His muscles are atrophied--hard to keep up a three hundred pushup a day regimen when you’ve been cut down to one meal a day (blamed on his latest “episode”)-- and his skin looks like a figure out of a wax museum. The curtains are permanently draw, certain that no pedestrian even has a chance of glimpsing that he’s still in the capital, and Lucinda stole all the lotion the first week.

Frankly, Jack realizes when he looks in the mirror that morning, he’s surprised the beard doesn’t make him look like more of a Neanderthal than David’s brothers.

 

It is day ninety-three, and _this_ is the day that Jack is hungrier than he has ever been.

Thomasina had come in that morning with empty hands and a gun strapped to her belt. Her fingers weren’t even anywhere near it. Lucinda had been curled up on the bed, knees drawn to her chin, making herself smaller than usual, while Jack had been standing by the large bay window looking only at beige.

“Is my Yom Kippur over yet?” he had asked before he spun around on the backs of his heels and saw nothing. No fruit, no honey, no plate laden with bread.

Thomasina had stared at him, marble-faced and unbending, legs drawn apart. “Atone,” she said, voice devoid of more life than his, “and your father will welcome you back. You are his heir.”

“No,” Jack told her, straight-faced, “I am his death.”

Thomasina left to the sounds of Lucinda’s shrill entreaties that fill Jack’s brain with all his own unanswered prayers.

 

It is day one hundred sixty-three and Jack’s insides are cannibalizing themselves.

Lucinda’s hair is done up, twisted in an elaborate braid encircling her head, held in place by butterfly clips. She’s pacing, feet tapping a battle march against the lush carpet, eyes fixated on the door. In her hands, she clutches a smooth envelope written in perfect script.

When the guards come, batons in hand and guns _drawn_ at the ready, Jack is bare and sprawled on the bed. She doesn’t look back and he doesn’t care about lifting his head.

The hall, narrow and decorated with pillars, taunts him after the doors are shut.

 

It is day two hundred and Jack is famished.

The room’s been ravaged, silver-spoon pillows thrown on the floor and thousand-thread sheets torn apart under ragged fingers: the ravings of a madman in the night. Jack is alone, and he talks now to God.

“What vile act,” he asks, screaming in his head, voice whisper-thin, “did I perform before my birth that my life is this series of _endless_ prisons? What forbidden fruit did I touch?”

David, Jack thinks, or perhaps God answers. He closes his eyes, stomach rumbling like a shaken earth, and butterflies dance in the darkness of his head.

 

It is day three hundred and fourteen and Jack is peckish.

If he had a chisel, he’d have scratched markings onto the wall, just like every other prisoner of war. Instead, time is kept in his head, archived by the amount of news he gets, the amount of chatter he hears, and the visits he doesn’t receive.

“David’s rebels have gained support from the army in Gath,” Mother tells him. Her slim legs are crossed and she’s balancing a teacup in the palm of her hand. Steam wafts memories of leaves in the forest and upturned dirt in the fields. Are they even his own? “The people haven’t heard, of course.”

It remains unspoken why Jack is allowed to know.

 

It is day three-hundred and sixty-five, and Jack Benjamin no longer feels hunger.

His rib cage is curved in, bent like battle armor that took too many blows, arms too weak to even hold up a knife. He’s hollow --his cheeks, his bones, his eyes-- and wrapped in someone else’s coat.

The door, gilded with gold and diamonds, dangles from its hinges, battered and forgotten. David kneels in front of him, supplicant, with butterflies’ wings fluttering a crown above his head. He reaches out, cradling Jack’s face with one hand, his skin soothing the burn of the tangled beard. In the other hand, he holds out a pomegranate --round and large and red. When Jack takes it, flesh bursting in his mouth, a river rushing down his cracked leather-brittle throat, the juice spills and stains his mouth with blood.


End file.
